NBC makes its departure from iTunes Store

Unable to come to an agreement on pricing with Apple, NBC has officially taken …

In August, NBC and Apple began a war of words over who would be at fault should NBC Universal remove its content from the iTunes Store come December. Not surprisingly, the dispute came down to money, though whether it was because Apple was recalcitrant on the pricing model or NBC wanted to gouge consumers largely came down to point of view. Negotiations continued through the fall, even as NBC began experimenting with its own content delivery system, Hulu, and partnered with companies like Netflix. Now December has arrived, and it looks like there will be lumps of coal for more than a few video buyers at the iTunes Store this Christmas.

NBC and Apple have officially gone their separate ways; the networks list in the iTunes Store is now considerably shorter. Gone are NBC, NBC News, NBC Sports, Bravo, SciFi, Sleuth, Telemundo, mun2, and USA. Setting aside the writer's strike, that means popular shows like Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, The Office, Pasión de Gavilanes, and the show about human beings as coat hangers, Project Runway, are no more. However, shows like the underrated Journeyman, which are shown on NBC, but whose distribution rights are not owned by the network, are still there.

As to who the winners and losers are in this battle—besides consumers, who always lose—both companies are hurt. NBC, like every other video content provider, has yet to figure out a strategy that encompasses the Internet (suing YouTube is not a strategy). Apple will continue to sell iPods no matter what NBC does, since iPods are largely about music. However, the inability to bring more video content—not to mention better visual quality—to the iTunes Store does further damage to the prospects of the Apple TV. Come next month, there will likely be less content for the beleaguered set-top box at the iTunes Store than when it was officially unveiled at Macworld Expo 2007. The question then becomes one of whether other video content providers (excepting Disney) will also abandon the iTunes Store in favor of whatever bad idea they come up with.